TINTIN Wraps (Mania.com)

By:Rob M. Worley Date: Monday, March 09, 2009Source: Various

Spielberg is about to call a "wrap" on the performance capture phase of the first 'Tintin' movie. Plus: WATCHMEN hype continues with a final wave of videos and the manga-based PRIEST movie gets a release date. Springing forward with a vengeance, it's your Comics2Film 9.3.9!

WATCHMEN #1 in the World

In an announcement that will surprise no one, 'Watchmen' claimed the #1 spot at the box office both domestically and on the international stage.

However, both the $50+ million domestic take and the $27.5 million foreign sales are below projections for the film which has a massive wave of hype behind it, and no real competition at the box office.

Mania.com has your analysis of the U.S. box office, while Variety runs down the international performance.

PRIEST set for 2010

ShockTilYouDrop.com reports that Sony Screen Gems has set a release date of August 13, 2010 for the big screen adaptation of the manga-based 'Priest' movie. The movie is to directed by Scott Stewart.

TINTIN Wraps Principal Motion Capture

'Tintin' is proving to be a quirk of modern filmmaking according to an interesting article in Variety.com. This week the film will wrap the "performance capture" stage of filming, although the month-long process involves little film at all.

This leg of the production, bringing Hergé's beloved comic book character to the big screen in a CGI animated trilogy, saw Steven Spielberg on the motion capture stage, directing his lead actors costumed in high-tech body suits. The process took 32 days and the performances, while videotaped for reference, largely exist as digital information.

For the second leg of production on 'The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn', Spielberg turns the performances over to producer Peter Jackson and his team, who will render them as CGI animation, creating the animated world of the film. That process is expected to take another 18 months.

It's a strange collaboration between filmmaking titans, who expect to make a trilogy of films this way.

Click through for more insights into the process and commentary from the principals involved.

Still More WATCHMEN Videos!

If you are the person who didn't see 'Watchmen' this weekend, here's a straggler video journal with interviews and footage dicussing aspects of the movie. That clip is at MSN.com.

Then there's the 'Watchmen' credits, a montage of images from the early days of the Minutemen and various points in the history of the world which unfold over the strains of Bob Dylan's "Times They Are A-Changin'". The footage was created by yU+co, a titling company that has a god-awful website and provided similar work for Zack Snyder's '300', among many other films.

Well, apparently yU+co issued a press release touting their work in the film. They apparently also distributed the 5 minute plus footage itself, which was displayed on many websites over the weekend. This displeased Warner Bros and the clip has been pulled from most websites, but not all.

If you want info about yU+co's work, Motionographer.com has a nice summary of the original press release.

Over at the New York Times, Zack Snyder is already doing his director's commentary on the film. They present an "Anatomy of a Scene", with Snyder narrating an abridged version of the street riot scene involving Nite Owl and The Comedian.

Finally, the New Frontiersman site offers this footage, circa 1985, with clips from the World in Focus news talk show, which ponders the question, "are we on the brink of nuclear war?" Interspersed are various clips of TV ads and other broadcasts from the era. Enjoy!